Hispanics and the Tyranny of Substandard Education

The scene was Los Angeles City Hall and the date March 8. The mood was festive but eager with a certain hospitality encompassing the occasion. The Mexican folk song or corrido rang out across the crowd as if to give approval to the spirit of protest being recalled. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the East Los Angeles Blowouts, honoring Sal Castro. Castro is the intrepid Lincoln High School teacher who organized the walkouts of 20,000 high school students to protest substandard educational services in the predominantly Mexican-American schools of East Los Angeles.

The reception marked the start of a two-year program of activities, including symposiums of organizers and community leaders, a public memorial honoring the walkouts, and a PBS documentary. To some the event was merely an anniversary remembering past events. But at closer look it seemed to me much more than a commemoration of past events. For as the Mariachis joyfully sang corridos , I wondered if it was not time for a corrido to ring across the land demanding change in accord with the spirit of the Mexican Revolution.

Any sober assessment of the past can no doubt conclude that historical cycles often repeat themselves in ways accompanied with profound irony. The onset of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 was preceded by a great festival in honor of Sept. 16th, the Mexican Independence Day. It was a festival of pomp and pageantry where the Mexican people yelled the famous gritos or cries “Long live liberty! Long live independence!” However celebratory or ego warming the gritos seemed at the time, they inevitably became ironic omens to the dictator Porfirio Diaz. The Mexican peoples’ thirst for justice cannot be denied. What followed were 30 years of sanguine sacrifice for the ideals of democracy and freedom. It seems strange but as I sat waiting for the reception to begin on March 8, I felt I could have very well been in the Palacio of Chapultec on Sept. 20, 1910, waiting to hear the great apostle of the revolution, Francisco Madero, denounce the tyranny of Porfirio Diaz.

Although, Chicanos today share in the profound American heritage of freedom and democracy, Hispanics throughout our land are oppressed by a terrible and subtle tyrant--the tyrant of substandard education. The reality of the situation remains, that no matter how noble Castro’s intentions were, the levels of academic standards and achievement have changed little since 1968, primarily in the East Los Angeles schools. The drop-out rates remain high, drug and gang-related problems still plague the schools, and SAT scores, the standard for college entry, remain below the national average. A singular exception is Garfield High School where Jaime Escalante, the subject of the current movie “Stand and Deliver” has produced some of the top calculus students in the nation. Escalante seems to be a small glimmer of hope.

However, it would be foolish for Americans of all races, especially Hispanics, to underestimate the thirst for freedom of Hispanic people. In our times this thirst must no doubt encompass within its demands economic independence. The most famous grito of the Mexican revolution was “ Tierra y Libertiad “ or “Land and Liberty.” The gritos that Hispanics must chant today is “Education and Liberty,” for truly education is liberty. It is a cry that we must “Stand and Deliver” loudly and with passionate clarity so that our needs cannot be ignored by others or by Hispanics themselves.

LEO BRIONES

La Mirada